When Did CK2 Become Benny Hill?

[Dudas Drakaan]

I've been gone from CK2 for a year, maybe more - the last update I saw was with the Charlemagne DLC, and then I lost interest. But now I've come back and what did you do to the combat system?

As a Byzantine count of Cyprus I called a crusade against the other side of Cyprus. I hired mercs, took the other side, and waited with half my force on either side of the island. Without surprise numerous Sunnis rose up and attacked me with a 6k stack to my 2k - but no problem, I have superior commanders and the crossing advantage. I win. I then chase them to the other side of Cyprus to finish them. I arrive, I defeat them, they run to the other side of Cyprus I was just on... ok. I run the other side of Cyprus, defeat them... they run, yet again to the other side...

This went on for about fifteen months since my numbers were so small compared to theirs and it took forever to break them down. Look, I completely understand the EU4 mechanic, but in EU4 if you smack them fast enough - no matter the size difference - they get stack wiped. Here it's just a Benny Hill chase.

Why was the combat system changed? It was fine!

Not only that but now I'm getting civil wars that get stuck at 100% where neither I nor my opponent can peace out. That was a bug in a Charlemagne and it's still here? That buggy crap was why I left in the first place and here the bugs remain and yet the game is worse?

Glad I decided to remind myself why I stopped playing before I paid for your new DLC.

 

[Griff Lancer]

Medieval wars were very rarely won in battles.
Siege their holdings down.

 

[Titan79]

Medieval wars were very rarely won in battles.

Well...

Hastings, Manzikert, Bannockburn, The Horns of Hattin... there were quite a few, I'd say (and those are not all, of course).

 

[Griff Lancer]

Well...

Hastings, Manzikert, Bannockburn, The Horns of Hattin... there were quite a few, I'd say (and those are not all, of course).

I know. It did happened. But most commanders liked these things called castles.

 

[Rognvaldr19]

Well...

Hastings, Manzikert, Bannockburn, The Horns of Hattin... there were quite a few, I'd say (and those are not all, of course).

Can't talk for Manzikert or the Horns of Hattin but the conqueror still had to besiege and take London afterwards, then he spent months putting down the Anglo-Saxons who resisted him still. As for Bannockburn, that was a defensive war to keep out invaders, the Bruce didn't need to besiege Scotland to win.

Medieval wars are never won with battles, they just turn the tide and remove resistance from the holdings and therefore the land. He who controls the land, controls the food, wealth and resources, and he who controls that, controls the kingdom.

 

[TL_]

The others are right. While there were certainly major land battles that get all the songs and glory in medieval warfare, most of the years of fighting took place over the course of long, drawn-out sieges. Think about how you can have a war rage for thirty or even a hundred years -- it doesn't happen if everyone runs out and meets on the field of battle in one big engagement, leaving castles empty.

 

[Titan79]

He who controls the land, controls the food, wealth and resources, and he who controls that, controls the kingdom.

That sounded very Dune-ish but ok. Stil, Manzikert was a decisive defeat by itself (although, admittedly, the Emperor himself had been captured and that contributed quite a lot in making it such).

 

[Naufragus]

Yeah, 2 county Islands have always been like that. Mallorca, Sardinia. Back and forth back and forth.

With your war though, does anyone else hold anything in either realm. If someone took advantage of the war and attacked one of you, you cant go peace until the province is recaptured.

I did both last week. While I was dealing with the yearly revolt some African shiek decided to invade Mallorca so to end my war I had get ships, sail over there and do the benny Hill thing.

 

[StarSword]

Fully occupy the other side of the island and park your ass there.

In my Ireland game I lost control of the eastern half of Iceland, Austisland, to an independence faction I didn't feel up to smashing, but retained Vestisland. Austisland was later conquered by the Norse (I think Svitjod) and I eventually got situated to reconquer it with a holy war. My allies and I sailed up and occupied the tribe the Norse built and the castle that I had built when I converted to feudalism, and I discovered something odd when the Norse began sailing doomstacks over.

Not only would the Norse armies focus on retaking Austisland to the exclusion of all else, but because I ruled the western county, they had nowhere to retreat to. If the battle took place in Vestisland, they would flee to Austisland. If the battle took place in Austisland, the enemy would be completely wiped out. So our man-for-man superior troops were crushing armies several times our size that were low in morale from the sea voyage and frequently fighting at a terrain disadvantage, and that plus ticking warscore from full control of the war target eventually allowed me to demand a surrender.

 

[Dudas Drakaan]

Medieval wars were very rarely won in battles.
Siege their holdings down.

Oh, I sieged their holdings. As in 1 holding - Cyprus. I defeated 5 Muslim kingdoms as a 1-province count in the example I gave by sieging down the wargoal then just sat there. I won the battles (via ping-pong). I won the war.

Was that my point? No. I know how to win. That does not make winning, or battles in general, any less stupid.

Edit: By "battles" I mostly mean shattered retreat. There is also an issue of teleporting armies (you know, giving your vassal English king a single province in Egypt, allowing you to raise all 15k English troops immediately in Egypt so you don't have to transport them). I don't really have a problem with the battle calculation system itself.

 

[hagagaga]

The thing about Manzikert is that it could only really be represented in CKII by saying that a faction leader pressed his demand while he was a commander and that led to him and his levies being taken out of the army right before it went into battle.

 

[dragoon9105]

Really its just a Handicap for the AI to recover from its own stupidity. It's been pointed out that it doesn't really help and just punishes the little guy more than it makes the combat balanced since there's not enough depth to the combat system to recognize when something is an "All or Nothing" battle like a Naval Invasion, or a Trapped Army in the mountains.

It'd be a better mechanic if shattered armies actually took attrition as they ran away and only started reinforcing when they have morale So there was an actual point to fighting in them in the first place.

 

[Urzhail64]

Medieval wars were pretty drawn out punctuated by the occasional battle. For instance, Grunwald (1410) didn't quite decide the war between the Teutonic Order and the Polish-Lithunian forces because they couldn't siege down Marienwerder...so the Order got a more tolerable treaty at Thorn as a result. It could have easily been more harsher had Marienwerder fallen.

By the same token, Crecy, Poiters and Agincourt didn't end the Hundred Years War despite all of them being decisive English victories although it did lead to the Treaty of Bretigny - as you all recall, the French won it in the end and reduced England to just Calais. Which they eventually took too.

 

[Dragatus]

Really its just a Handicap for the AI to recover from its own stupidity. It's been pointed out that it doesn't really help and just punishes the little guy more than it makes the combat balanced since there's not enough depth to the combat system to recognize when something is an "All or Nothing" battle like a Naval Invasion, or a Trapped Army in the mountains.

It'd be a better mechanic if shattered armies actually took attrition as they ran away and only started reinforcing when they have morale So there was an actual point to fighting in them in the first place.

Shattered armies actually do take atrittion damage while retreating.

 

[theKing1988]

Well...

Hastings, Manzikert, Bannockburn, The Horns of Hattin... there were quite a few, I'd say (and those are not all, of course).

Manzikert wasn't decisive for the Turks. The massive chaos in the Byzantine state hierarchy and the series of rebellions by ambitious generals that followed Manzikert was what allowed them to take all of Anatolia in 10 years. And it wasn't a linear war that lead to the take-over of Anatolia. Most of the Turks that moved in did so without the supervision or consent of Alp Arslan and later Malik Shah in Baghdad. They were roving bands of Turkish tribal warriors who were notoriously un-controllable and as the Byzantine generals bled their armies dry in rebellion after rebellion they even started employing them further and further west as reinforcements in the vain hope that they would be better at controlling them, than the Muslim powers had been. Cut to a couple of years later and these Turks establish a realm centered on Nikaea

Horns of Hattin wasn't decisive either. Saladin still had to siege down Crusader Castle after Crusader Castle and when the Third Crusade arrived 3 years after Hattin, Antioch, Krak des Chevaliers, Tripoli, Tyre and Acre was still holding out. So many users on the forum have a tendency to wildly inflate the importance of Battles.

Not that ping-ponging is perfect of course, but stack-swiping from before was at the very least equally bad and immensely exploitable.

 

[Ilyasviel]

Not that ping-ponging is perfect of course, but stack-swiping from before was at the very least equally bad and immensely exploitable.

It really wasn't as bad. It was much less tedious and it gave smaller realms a real chance to win wars. It was exploitable, but there's nothing wrong with that since it could go both ways (it didn't favor the human player exclusively). The new system just favors large countries, because they can retreat indefinitely and reinforce with their infinite manpower, while small realms which depend on mercenaries for survival will run out of money without gaining the decisive victory they need. It also makes very little sense that an army made out primarily of levies will just ping-pong for months or years without ever truly disintegrating until everyone is killed.

 

[BrokenSky]

Well...

Hastings, Manzikert, Bannockburn, The Horns of Hattin... there were quite a few, I'd say (and those are not all, of course).

not to mention Crecy and Agincourt.

...

wait no we lost that war...
Ok we did and we didn't. We did win some pretty great concessions for captured commanders (in game the equiv. of ransoming the captured enemy leaders back mid war I guess?) but we didn't get the french crown.

Plus in Hastings the defender (loser) king was literally killed (tbh I feel like if you are attacking someone for their primary title and you kill them in battle it should give huge warscore but whatever).

But yeah wrt the effectiveness of the mechanics, I feel like shattered retreat doesn't really help very much. It's better than the old system, but tbh having the levies shatter and go home after a bad loss (e.g. attacked while on low morale and insta-rout) would have been better than the old system too. Possibly better than the new system.

 

[_Perun_]

the levies shatter and go home after a bad loss (e.g. attacked while on low morale and insta-rout) would have been better than the old system too. Possibly better than the new system.

That would not be retreat but desertion.

 

[Titan79]

To all people who shared their views about some battles being decisive or not: ok, I may agree, but you're all (or almost) missing the OP's point which is that the new SR mechanic pushes the already known "ping-pong" effect way too far.

That is what the OP was arguing about ultimately.

 

[Voldurak78]

You'll have the option to turn shattered retreat off next patch without affecting ironman.